A Life Based Entirely On The Future Is 

Misery for All

Maybe you and I wish to understand what has happened to us already and why it has happened before we launch yet another program to bring a future we desire to ourselves and our friends and relations? I am speaking about the way families live and have lived here on this planet for untold thousands of years. I am speaking not of one nation but of all humanity. Humans are suffering now as you read this all over the world. We are all in the same boat.

What causes this? Desire? I want something I do not have or I want to keep something I think I must have and may lose? Why think that way at all? 

A good friend once said to me seated together in a relaxed feeling of well-being at a delightful party, “I want both”. She meant that she wanted inwardly to be a contented, free person who enjoys good, healthy relationships with other contented people who love one another and she wanted to be very rich outwardly. Since that night we have seen very little of each other and my friend has accumulated great wealth which includes a larger and larger house and a swimming pool and numerous vehicles and servants and so on and on. She has also become an active member of an organized religion and has taken the matter so far she is one of its official decorated leaders who conducts rituals and voices its doctrines. Has my friend created a Utopia? I can say with confidence “No” for it is impossible to create a Utopia based upon a desire for some outcome in the future and that has been demonstrated over and over in all parts of the earth by all societies put together by humans since the beginning of time. All nations that have come about have tried it and all are trying it today and nothing about us has changed. And this even includes every attempt by only two people to live together in peace in what is practiced universally as a marriage.

All humans today must look once and for all and see clearly what we speak of when we speak of the future. The answer is simple and anyone can see it but only if one is able to stop denying the fact. The fact is the future does not exist, never has existed, and never will exist inwardly where we all experience our lives. By relying on it for our happiness psychologically we are fools for to choose not to open our presents today which exists as a fact in favor of what is mere abstract thought is to assure that one will never be happy inwardly today. What fools! Today is perpetual. Tomorrow is never.  Happiness for a human has been forsaken to ashes. If a forest of trees were to be able to live thinking of ways to become something other than what it is there would remain not a tree. Few will disagree with the saying “we have lost our humanity”.

One should recognize that all who live to become something else tomorrow or next year are driven to compete against others by selfish thoughts which build into greed and violence and hatred and all manner of suffering. Each bunch seeks to better itself at the expense of some other group. Conflict, not peace abides. It is a fact.

To top it off, one says we must fight this next war. It will end all wars. After all the deaths and suffering we will be happy. So, we kill each other. There is a celebration only of the cessation of the horror and madness and suffering the war has caused then we prepare for the next war. This brand of insanity is spread through and perceived in every sector of every society. It must end if we are to be true humans.

Immigrants have always thought when we go to another country we will find plenty and live well. This cannot be. The same people with the same policy of giving up today for tomorrow cannot help but to recreate another miserable, unlivable society in place after place. All societies are headed in the same direction using up their water supply, using up the air clean enough to breathe, using up their food supply creating more disease.

The obvious way to a happy future is to live fully as human beings today. The first step is to be clear what a human being is actually then live committed to that fact each moment. Watch like a hawk for the appearance of the slightest suggestion to return to base the practice of living on some future goal. Remain thereby true disciples! That and only that is real human discipline.

Nobody wanted a light bulb!  Far more fulfilling is it for a human to sit ‘neath the glow of the Moon and the twinkling of stars holding the hand of another real human than to plan a trip up there. In truth, the Moon may come to you if you really love Her. And , if so, the trip could be both effortless and beyond time and distance once you know yourself.

I know a fella who when he first saw Orion in the night sky was struck by a feeling of pure love beyond any he had known before and although many years have passed the feeling remains as great every time he looks on the constellation. No time. No distance. Love omnipresent. At heart, so is the human being.

 FREEDOM FROM THE SELF

If you look closely you will see you have been serving and you are serving still the dull, gray stupidity of human beings lost in the tightly planted woods of their conditioned brains with no way out while believing themselves to be intelligent and free. Aha! Then you will know.  

And you will take an entirely new kind of action altogether never before open to you. Because we must take this step alone it is ours and that makes all the difference. I know nothing if I let someone else know it for me. I am still ignorantly believing in another. The record is abundantly clear: that has not changed humanity for tens of thousands of years or longer. When the step is taken the self has gone bye-bye. Love and freedom are present. 

 THE FIRST KILLING 

Let’s say it is at the dawn of human people on Earth however or whenever it happened. A man and woman have a child, a son.  They have daughters. Later they have another son. One of the sons thinks his brother is preferred above him. He tells no one but the level of hatred for his brother festers and grows large until one day he lays a trap and murders his own brother.

Those humans still living are in anguish over this tragedy. One asks “What shall we do when a human murders?”

One replies, “ We shall take the killer and kill him as a punishment for his evil deed and as a warning to prevent such a terrible thing  happening again.” 

Two or three agree. But one speaks out “No. That is not wise. We should not ask: “Now that this horrible thing has occurred what do we do to this one who did the killing”. The right question to ask is what truly can be the cause of one of us killing another? We should trace back to see how it came to this awful action on the part of one of us against another of us and make a correction within ourselves that might actually prevent the recurrence of such tragic occurrences in the future. The way you propose will leave the tribe  failing to address what may grow into more of the same. Don’t you see? In truth, were we to kill the one who murdered we are endorsing that act…the act of slaying…as a valid response to feelings of loss that will be so recorded in all our minds and the killing is bound to go on and on. You see, do you not, what must follow when the real wound goes undressed?

The one who had spoken first gave this retort, “I am an individual! We are all individuals. I wish you would deal with us as individuals.”

The one who had said “no” to the idea of killing the murderer spoke again, saying, “The word ‘individual’, of which you show so much pride, means ‘not divisible’. In pride you say ‘I stand alone!’. In truth you know not what you do to yourself and those you care about when you act on the belief “I stand alone!” and isolate yourself behind a wall of your own making. You will soon live in a cold, cold world without love.

In such a world people play a game where a few gather riches and the many starve. They called it “trade” in the beginning. The few with some of their riches purchase politicians to make it illegal to steal their loot. Some of the many without will try to rob the rich. In the attempts people will be killed. All Hell breaks loose. Society has gone mad. In fear and rage people demand something be done. So, people who attempted to rob the rich are arrested, tried, and executed. Nobody looks into the “game”. You know the rest of that story. You live by it.

People crossed oceans to find “gold”. They planted flags and claimed the land. As the new rulers they demanded the natives to spit out the gold or die. How did the world become so corrupt? It had become so before the ships sailed after the gold lying in another place. A little child could tell you. All one has to do is to recall with clarity how you were treated after your arrival here at birth and, if you can stand to be so honest, see the corrupt society for what it is and you will want no more to do with it. Truth is simple yet it is so, so difficult to admit one’s own part in it. But it happens to be so that until you do you will remain blind to the way to make a meaningful change. One has to cease pointing the finger and put one’s own house in order. You think the fire is “out there” but it is “in here”. 

 LIFE AND DEATH

Now, what we got here for livin’ is life. You might reply to the writer, I’m not stupid, I know it’s life! Well, I say, you do and you don’t. Life, for one thing is not bound by time, is not one straight horizontal line. Naw, Sir! You tryin’ to force it to be that is the source of your fear of death and  a lot o’ troubles. And you tryin’ to make death be the end of that horizontal is causin’ a whole lot more. Life and death move together as one thing by a timeless movement. A mouthful. The past and the future are in the now. Life and death are both tremendously vital. In fact, to die while remaining in a living organism is what it is all about. That requires an understanding of death. Death is the ending and the beginning. The most vital thing around the tragic death of a young person is the realization we must not let it be in vain. DYING, THEN, IS LIVING!

 MEDITATION AND CREATIVITY

Love is not yours or mine.

Compassion is not yours or mine. 

Love and Compassion bring extraordinary intelligence.

Meditation is a tricky business.

First, who is meditating?

Second, why would anyone need to sit down to meditate?  

Third, does that which is meditating hope to gain, becoming better,  by the effort?

Fourth, can a shallow and confused mind ever find clarity?

Is it possible something within you that is not meditating is watching  you meditate, or trying to? You may come to see that that inquiry into what is meditation anyway is very much a vital part of meditation.

The writer says that the something that drives us to meditation is able to reveal, not to you, but to reveal what is actually present as a fact and the meaning of attention. Finally, then, is it possible that the true value of meditation is not to improve the one who sits but to reveal that an image can never be made real by any method whatsoever bringing an end to the life being led by some personal image and allowing reality to blossom forth?

In the blossoming a gap is created between the truth of being and any image or ideal thought has determined one needs to become. The gap is compassion. One cannot cultivate love and compassion. They are present when self image is not in charge. In the dimension of love and compassion there is no fear, no anger, no resentment, no greed, lust nor hatred.

 What is called life is the pursuit of happiness over time through thought. Actually, life is a timeless movement arising from beyond thoughts.Thinking is good for something like remembering where you left your keys but thought must never be allowed to interfere with one’s life. It only brings conflict and confusion in that arena. 

Problem solving sets up patterns and is mechanistic which life is certainly not! Life is in motion and is always fresh and new. So, whenever one approaches it by thinking to problem solve one will be stuck in the dead past repeating the same mistakes totally absent from life which has moved on without you. In that way every war is the same war so thinking concludes: “war will always be with us”. War is practiced by people who try to live in the past. It is so unnecessary. It is a tragedy.

Two nations are arguing over territory. Unable to agree, war begins. Many on both sides will die, many will suffer great losses. At the end one will receive the territory by violent force which means it has acquired one half of many dead babies which can be likened to the one Solomon agreed to divide between the two women who argued before him over who was the rightful mother of a child. The dead bodies means there will be another war, just a matter of time. And more dead bodies. Dead in past wars are memorialized to mandate another war. When will we ever learn? Solomon was wise and knew the true mother would give up her baby to see it live and that mother would act in the timeless realm where something brand new is bound to happen. Is anyone getting this?

 Learn about a beauty without object…a state of mind and its absolute freedom and peace. Such beauty is not personal. When it is the priority of one’s life, the moment eternal, there is an intelligence far beyond that otherwise thought to be intelligence. In that state, what you perceive is not loved and admired by you personally for its beauty, rather it is beautiful because you love it. With personal beauty there will always arise desire to possess the object of beauty while in the state of beauty without object desire never emerges. All that is beheld is beautiful. Can you feel the difference? Speaking of a power to transform, in that state of beauty without object, being is able to make everything beautiful merely looking through the eyes of a god.